A NEW £7.8 million health facility in Kincardine has moved a step closer after plans were submitted to Fife Council.

NHS want to create a health and wellbeing centre along with a car park and associated landscaping on green space west of Feregait, close to Tulliallan Primary School.

It first announced its plans to replace the village's existing health centre in 2016 after stating that the building had "reached the end of its economic life as a clinical facility".

The former police station was built in the 1930s and had been modified considerably throughout its lifetime, now sitting at three times its original size.

In a planning statement, NHS Fife said their vision was to create a new Community Health and Wellbeing Centre for Kincardine that would allow services to be "brought back towards

the community" while looking to optimise flexibility within the building and accommodate potential future expansion.

"The key driver is a need to create a contemporary health and wellbeing centre for the community of Kincardine," it stated. "The concept design solution is derived from a central courtyard garden which is located at the heart of the floor plan which will bring natural daylight, sunlight, natural ventilation and landscaping into the core of the building.

"This provides a focus on wellbeing, enhancing the patient and visitors' experience whilst also enhancing the daily experience of the administrative and medical staff that are working in the building on a daily basis.

"The building design itself is seen as a ‘pavilion in the landscape’ located on the site with a light touch and embracing and enhancing the surrounding landscape and parkland within which the building sits, and the landscaped courtyard is at the heart of the whole health and wellbeing centre.

"The courtyard is flanked on two sides by wings of clinical rooms with a continuous circulation route wrapping around the internal courtyard, which acts as a navigational tool to simplify general wayfinding."

Earlier this year, the Press reported that estimates for the facility had risen from the original cost of £4.65 million to £7.8m due to a "perfect storm" of pressures including the coronavirus pandemic, the conflict in Ukraine and Brexit.

The health board's head of capital planning and project director, Ben Johnstone, told board members back in June that despite the increases in cost, projects in Kincardine and Lochgelly were "considered to represent value for money" in the current marketplace.